Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[AVGresponding]

Tuesday, Autoshite forum went offline for a day, they aren't sure why, now EEVBlog is offline.
Must be something going around...

[tggzzz]

Tuesday, Autoshite forum went offline for a day, they aren't sure why, now EEVBlog is offline.
Must be something going around...

gnif did post a message saying it would be going offline for DB maintenance.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

[tautech]

Tuesday, Autoshite forum went offline for a day, they aren't sure why, now EEVBlog is offline.
Must be something going around...

Only lasted a few minutes.....

[AVGresponding]

Tuesday, Autoshite forum went offline for a day, they aren't sure why, now EEVBlog is offline.
Must be something going around...

Only lasted a few minutes.....

Typically, the few minutes of my morning break >:(

[TonyAlbus]

You can't have too many Power supplies, same for Frequency Counters
So an other one added.

The XL Microwave Frequency Counter 26.5 GHz.
The brand better known now as Pendulum
Cleaning, Opening and Adjusting.
Lucky find, with case and all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNCksl13dEk

front.jpg

Oh yeah a PM6690 / CNT-90 is on its way (hand on head icon)

[25 CPS]

took asta out to pee last night at 9pm. smell of smoke was so strong that i thought one of the neighbors out back had a bonfire going. nope. it was smokey everywhere.

this morning we are in an orange fog. from the front porch we can usually see a cell tower and water tower about 2 miles away. this morning they are not visible, and houses only a couple of hundred yards away are hard to see. my eyes are itchy. it smells like dirty socks on a campfire.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS UP IN CANADA BURNING?

I was visiting friends in Pennsylvania and drove home on the 5th. The smoke was really thick and I thought there must have been a fire in one of the national or state forests I passed through on the way back, figuring that the Alberta and Nova Scotia fires would be too far away to do this but I was totally wrong and they were the source of the smoke. I know at least one football game was cancelled in Ottawa over horrible air quality. There have been a few days in my area that I could smell smoke and it was thick and hazy. Things have cleared up a bit since then and the fires are slowly coming under better control.

On another note, I'm going to try to get a look at the 141T later today. I'll post an update if I get to it.

[25 CPS]

So, the 141T. I did get into it a little bit in the late afternoon.

It was a beautiful day so I dragged it out into the back yard rather than work in the basement workshop for two reasons. One, to enjoy the beautiful day, and the other was to let the ultraviolet present in daylight give the neon voltage regulator a bit of an extra kick to help it strike.



The patio table is not ideal for this. I've got a sturdier 4x4 folding table but it's lent out and I have a cart I wouldn't mind kicking outside permanently for this sort of thing but it's got stuff on it that I need to clear off before I drag it out of the basement. The rickety patio table under the weight of the 141T slowed me down because I was being careful not to cause the whole thing to collapse.



The first order of business was to check the 1 A fast blow fuses on the backside of the plugin carrier and they were both fine.



The 141T got turned on its side and oriented the same way as in the diagrams in the manual.





The 0.75A fuse in the top left of the cluster of the four did not look healthy at all and measured open. I don't know why the end caps turned colour but the fuse holder didn't. I had purchased a full set of fuses a while ago for this machine at Sayal but they only had minifuses so I bought holders with the idea of clipping them in temporarily for troubleshooting purposes which is what I ended up doing.



I attempted a startup with the plugins disconnected and then seated them several seconds later. Nothing blew, nothing smoked, but nothing worked. I checked what I thought was the regulated +100 V line (white with red stripe?) but had no voltage. If I did measure the correct thing there, it looks like the regulated 100V isn't working even though the neon is glowing. I had to button it up and take it inside so this is as far as I got with it today.

While I was working on it in the back yard, I was using my Agilent U1272A which is the ready at all times DMM. It's got a basic set of test leads plugged in at all times even when the zipper case is closed so it's the fastest meter to set up and use. However, the probes on it have fully exposed spikes and that's not a problem for most rough troubleshooting but the A2 power supply board in the 141T is crowded and I was beginning to worry about accidentally shorting things together so when I resume work on this, it'll be with a different meter the test lead setup I prefer for this kind of work: alligator clip to hold the ground side in place and either a minigrabber or sheathed spike probe for measuring around.

While I was down in Pennsylvania visiting friends though, I did end up using the U1272A and U1252A at a railway museum for part two of troubleshooting a 600 V lighting circuit. I can probably do a post about that later if anyone's interested.

[25 CPS]

I had some further thoughts about the 141T on Tuesday night.

The first was that the clipped in external fuse holder carrying the wrong length 0.75 A fuse is cumbersome at best and the first order of business is to obtain the correct sized replacement and put that in since it's needed anyways and get the jury rigged mess out of the way that was ok for initial troubleshooting, but that's about it.

I checked over the manual again and confirmed that the white wires with red stripe are the regulated +100 V lines from the A2 power supply board to elsewhere in the machine. If the zero volts reading on there I got is correct and not a mismeasurement, this begins to narrow down the location of possible faults since the V1 neon was glowing which meant that the +100 V line was energized at least that far. The plan I came up with was to drop by Sayal Electronics and maybe one or two other stores on the way to football practice yesterday to get the correct replacement fuse and then install that the next time I work on the 141T, confirm no output on the +100 V regulated line, and then start checking for voltage loss between the regulator neon and the output terminals on the board to try and locate the problem. On the other hand, if there is regulated +100 V present at the outputs, the next thing I was going to do to investigate the lack of a trace was check the CRT high voltage using the military surplus Fluke 27 and HV probe kit that a bunch of people here bought on eBay a couple of years ago.



I did get to Sayal Electronics on the way to football practice and they did have the correct replacement fuses in stock. And they also had Pozidrive drivers which I've been looking for but hadn't seen anywhere except for extremely expensive prices online. These were reasonably priced so I bought two sets, one to keep in the tool set in the truck and one on the bench at home.

I was originally planning to resume work on the 141T today but that football practice left me pretty sore and I haven't felt like moving it around to work on it. I'm not sure if I'll dig into it tomorrow beyond drawing up a troubleshooting plan based on the diagrams in the manual. I might wait until the July 1st long weekend to handle it since there's a gap before that with no games or practices leaving me not all that interested in moving heavy machinery around.

[Cubdriver]

Now that I have a good supply of both pozi and standard Phillips screwdrivers, I find that I run into the same transmogrification problem that I do with 1/2 & 9/16” and 10 & 13mm sockets - they all sense what you need and morph into their opposite number. When I need one, all that seems to be at hand is the other. Later when I need the other, they morph into the first I was looking for.

The other fun thing is when working on HP gear, have both at hand, because it’s almost always been bastardized over the years and will have a good mix of both drive types. A cover will almost always have at least one mismatched head type.

-Pat

[Robert]

25 CPS said "The 0.75A fuse in the top left of the cluster of the four did not look healthy at all and measured open. I don't know why the end caps turned colour but the fuse holder didn't. I had purchased a full set of fuses a while ago for this machine at Sayal but they only had minifuses so I bought holders with the idea of clipping them in temporarily for troubleshooting purposes which is what I ended up doing.
" in his 141T repair post.
The fuse caps turned colour because they are silver plated. The clips and other fuse caps are nickel plated. The colour change probably is unrelated to the fuse failure and may have happened long before. BTW if by minifuse, you mean the automotive type then these have very different time-currrent curves to glass fuses and may not provide correct protection. OKish for fault finding but not replacement.

Robert.

[Robert]

More TE incoming. I just bought a Agilent E8510A LAN GPIB gateway. So in theory I should be able to access my instruments anywhere.

[URI]

More TE incoming. I just bought a Agilent E8510A LAN GPIB gateway. So in theory I should be able to access my instruments anywhere.

Very useful piece of equipment -I could get one for a reasonable price some time ago. -Works fine for me but I have an uptime-issue with my setup (dhcp from my internet router): after some random time (several weeks/months) the E8510A doesn't react anymore, just frozen. Power-cycling helps but isn't the most elegant method.

[BU508A]

Some time ago I've bought an 8510A, too.
I did a teardown of it, can be found here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/ ... msg2875840

[Cerebus]

More TE incoming. I just bought a Agilent E8510A LAN GPIB gateway. So in theory I should be able to access my instruments anywhere.

Snap, except I beat you to it, I bought the first of the two.

I will add my usual network engineer's warning that connecting something like that to a network that also has Internet access is akin to digital suicide, so it really is best left as "in theory". The word "https" doesn't appear once in the documentation, whereas "http" appears many times. I think one may draw quite reasonable conclusions about the network security stance of the gateway from that little snippet of information.

[Robert]

I paid £75 for my E8510A which while not Jammy Git is a pretty good buy.
I'll not be accessing it remotely. It will be nce to access the DMM and 'scope from any PC on my internal network though.

[mnementh]

What could possibly go... Right...?





I guess the answer to that is "Blessed fucking little, that's what."

After 3 attempts including hammering, heating, penetrating oil and heating again for a solid 10 minutes at full blast, still just rounded the fucking thing off.

Tomorrow I'll plug-weld a nut to it; that'll either get it loose or break off flush. After which, I'll have to drill it out and tap the hole.

mnem

[mnementh]

Wake up next morning to this in the Discord:

I must be a sick cunt as from waking hour all I thought of was mnem's nuts. How's your nuts mnem, please put me out of misery

So first, I post some hot nuts...

Attempt no 2...

*wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-spray with WD40-wiggle-wiggle-KATOINK!*

fuck.

Whatissit?

You disassembled Wall-Es face?

then, to put poor florianix out of his misery, I posted some borked nuts.

Oh phew.

You really cannot imagine how relieved I am now.

And thankful for getting those images out of my head.

mnem

Def got good weld on the 2nd attempt; hence them snapping off flush.

This am a homogeneous mass of dissimilar metals. Gonna have to dooit with drill & tap.

Pretty sure the studs are nicely annealed now, tho.

[tautech]

Another day later and I'm still thinking about the Dwagons nuts.

How they hanging mnem ?

[Cerebus]

Another day later and I'm still thinking about the Dwagons nuts.

How they hanging mnem ?

You're one sick puppy; but we knew that.

[tautech]

Another day later and I'm still thinking about the Dwagons nuts.

How they hanging mnem ?

You're one sick puppy; but we knew that.

Mnem fixed his nuts.... no longer need to worry about the Dwagons nuts, phew !

[mnementh]

Another day later and I'm still thinking about the Dwagons nuts.

How they hanging mnem ?

A little low and to the left, except on payday; then they're always perky. How boutchoo...?

mnem
One dwagon lived to tell the tale...

[tautech]

Another day later and I'm still thinking about the Dwagons nuts.

How they hanging mnem ?

A little low and to the left, except on payday; then they're always perky. How boutchoo...?

mnem
One dwagon lived to tell the tale...

Good week so smiley chap here, 3 analyzers plus other stuff too.

[mnementh]

Payday does usually make one feel better; especially if one can indulge in a little retail therapy...

mnem
*toddles off to ded*

[mnementh]

The Saga of mnem's Nuts continues; first, with a little wet-drilling action...





...followed by some sqweezin' in a vise, and a whole lot of witchet-watchet, witchet-watchet, witchet-watchet-ing...




... until finally, he is well and truly screwed. m6 stainless, yo.




P3 on a bit ratchet FTW!




Now all I have to do is carve the remains of these plastic split-cone shims out of 15 more corners and I can start reassembling...

When I couldn't get that one corner piece apart without the bolts snapping off, I resorted to burning the plastic out with torches and driving the shelves down the poles with a rubber mallet.




What a colossal fustercluck that turned into; 80s and 80% humidity was almost like being back in Houston again.

mnem
...oh, and wire-wheel the holes. and the SS poles. and wipe the shelves down...

[mnementh]

Now all I have to do is carve the remains of these plastic split-cone shims out of 15 more corners and I can start reassembling...

mnem
...oh, and wire-wheel the holes. and the SS poles. and wipe the shelves down...

So after much heavy lifting and all that nut polishing I arrived at this point a couple nights ago...



...and with some draft labor in the form of a young strong boi actually following directions, turned that into this little corner of relative order and sanity.

Don't worry tho, you all haven't lost your messy widdle Discordant-dwagon; pretty much everything not in this frame still looks like the last pic... including the other half of the basement on the other side of that wall.

mnem
Life is messy; bring a towel. Or better yet, a strong young boi armed with towels.